That’s an Associated Press photo from October 2012, taken of a yard sign in Dellslow, W.Va., not long before that year’s presidential election. But it could just as easily have been taken this fall, pretty much anywhere in the Appalachian coalfields.

No, this election has been all about every candidate from a major party trying to out anti-Obama their opponent. The liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for American had a post today called How The Media Helped The GOP Sell Their Fear-Based Appeal. But like a lot of this sort of “analysis,” they are far too easy on the Democrats. As any reader of this blog knows, the Democrats in coal country have been trying to sell the anti-Obama snake oil as hard as any of the Republicans.

When all the votes are counted, our region will still face too much drug abuse and too little education, too much pollution and not nearly enough quality health care, too many WARN notices and too few jobs — too much fear and far, far too little hope. And mostly all the election will have done with its endless television ads, sound bites and attacks is the one thing that coalfield residents can least afford: Torn us further apart, instead of bringing us closer together.

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Going to the polls feels like an exercise in futility, but go I must, if for no other reason than to stake my claim to a day when it will NOT be an exercise in futility.

If today’s outcome is as awful as has been predicted, the opportunity will arise to re-shape the Democratic Party in our tormented state and offer voters in future elections an actual choice on Election Day.

Here are two serious questions, Ken: would any Demcoratic candidate who talked about issues in the way you suggest have had a wax cat’s chance in a candle factory of being elected? If the candidates who instead espoused a Republican-lite “War On Coal” platform lose anyway, wouldn’t they have still done a service to our state by raising the issues and empowering voters to speak openly about those issues, themselves?

It’s too late. The coal industry OWNS West Virginia. They are so politically powerful than no elected official dares stand up to them. They have brainwashed the populace into believing that coal is all West Virginia is and can ever be. Coal industry advertising convinces everyone that supporting mountaintop removal mining is the epitome of patriotism.

First, as we’ve written on this blog, public opinion polls show — generally speaking — that West Virginians don’t like mountains being blown up. They also don’t like coal miners being blown up. But they also don’t like watching their neighbors lose their jobs. Polls show people here generally have favorable views of the coal industry and of coal miners — but also want clean air, clean water, a liveable environment and climate, and also want a more diverse economy.

I do think it’s difficult to convince major party candidates to take up these issues, especially when some citizen activists give media interviews in which they say they don’t vote because voting won’t make a difference. Any candidate or campaign consultant who hears that leaves the room.

Second, certainly, I happen to believe that giving more attention to these issues is a service to the state — and candidates who do that would be doing the future of the state a service. Movements aren’t always built on one election or one campaign. But it’s a start.

I don’t think you’ve dodged anything (assuming your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek). Your answers largely line up with my sense of the issues.

I certainly agree with you, Ken, on citizen activists stating they don’t vote. It was most frustrating to witness, but if it was said openly, you may certainly be assured it is a position held by no small number of people. I disagree with them.

The problem in our larger West Virginia political universe is the intersection between ambition and public weal. As this election has now shown, ambition became a super highway and the public weal barely a mud rut. That’s why none of the issues that actually matter were addressed. One wonders if the losers will realize that or merely decide they didn’t display sufficient obsequy to the coal industry.

As to your assertion about West Virginians disliking the demolition of the mountains for which we’re known while at the same time respecting the people who have sacrificed and died down the decades for coal’s well-being, they are not incongruent. Where the problem arises is in the present, in which, under most scenarios, miners are going to continue to lose jobs no matter what either mining advocates or citizen activists do. Such is the curse of the finite resource, and none of the candidates possess the power to make more coal former under our hills.

Taken together, then, West Virginians are in a conundrum: do we continue to destroy our patrimony in favor of a relatively small work force and massive corporate and financier profits, or do we try to limit the damage already done, end future damage and demand economic justice for the workers who will be affected? As far as I can sort it, it will be one or the other and cannot be both.

Continuing the dialogue, insisting upon it, in fact, is the only hope our state has. It would be nice if those politicians willing to do so could be treated equally in the campaigns. That’s up to media in our state.

Poll questions are many times contructed to be answered in preconceived ways. Everyone wants clean water. Everyone wants clean air. Now that the election is over, I believe West Virginians were looking above and over just local and state problems when going to the vote yesterday. I believe that the national Democratic Party and West Virginians in general do not see eye to eye on many moral and social issues. And boy did it show yesterday.